BY TOM SOMACH

World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) Main Event winner and teen poker queen Annette Obrestad has signed an endorsement deal with online poker room and WSOPE sponsor Betfair Poker (www.betfair.com).

The 18-year-old Norwegian girl, the youngest person ever to win a WSOP or WSOPE championship gold bracelet, will shill for Betfair, a British online poker room, in exchange for financial backing and a stipend.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but it will work like this: Betfair Poker will pay her entry fees into various poker tournaments on the European poker circuit. In exchange, she will wear advertising for the online room on her clothing when she competes in the tourneys, giving Betfair Poker highly-prized media exposure and publicity. She will also draw a salary from the room. In addition, she will further promote the room by playing online at Betfair Poker.

“This might be a cause of some dismay to many of the top pros that she knocked out in this (WSOPE) tournament,” said Betfair’s Head of Poker, Ben Fried.

“She is a fearsome poker player and commands great respect at the table,” he added. “It is fantastic to have her as a member of Team Betfair.”

“We are thrilled to get Annette on our professional poker team and have great belief that we will be seeing a lot of Annette in the years to come,” said Frode Helland, Betfair’s marketing manager for Norway.

“In our opinion, she is one of the world’s best online tournament players, and we are sure that she will have great success playing live as well,” he added.

After signing the deal, Obrestad wasted little time in in showing she can shill a Net poker room as well as any say-for-pay poker veteran.

“I am very happy that we reached an agreement and I am happy it was Betfair,” she said in a press release issued by the online room. “Their management and poker software are both something I really like. I am looking forward to being a good ambassador for them and can focus on getting good results.”

Endorsement deals between poker players and online poker rooms generally work out well for both parties, but not always.

Phil “Poker Brat” Hellmuth Jr. shills for online poker room Ultimate Bet (www.ultimatebet.com), Daniel Negreanu does likewise for Full Tilt Poker (www.fulltiltpoker.com) and actor/poker pro Lou Diamond Phillips flacks for Celeb Poker (www.celebpoker.com).

Those online rooms have generally been satisified with their sponsorship deals.

Bodog Poker (www.newbodog.com), however, hooked up in a deal with pokerdom’s version of the Edsel, and later came to regret it.

Bodog Poker at one time had an endorsement deal with 2006 WSOP Main Event winnner Jamie Gold.

But after Gold was sued for half his Main Event winnings by a man who claimed he had a deal with Gold to split them and Gold had reneged, and the ensuing court case tarnished Gold’s image, Bodog Poker dropped Gold like the proverbial hot potato.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)